Private collection, Japan, by 1954; sale, Christie's, New York, 7 November 2002, lot 118.
Private collection, New York, by whom acquired at the above sale.
Acquired from the above by the present owner.

Lot Essay

Odilon Redon's vision of the last sufferings of Christ is especially indebted to Matthias Grünewald's Crucifixion of Christ, painted in 1523-1524 as part of the Tauberbischofsheimer Altarpiece (Badische Kunsthalle Karlsruhe). It was probably brought to Redon's attention by his friend the writer J.K. Huysmans, who viewed the painting on a trip in 1888 to Kassel, where it was then located, and described it in his novel Là-Bas, published in 1891. Redon painted a copy after Grünewald around this time (Wildenstein, no. 514; Barber Institute of Fine Arts, Birmingham, UK) and was especially interested in bow-shaped crosspiece in Grünewald's painting. He refers to this motif in the arc shape seen above the cross in Le crucifix.

Christian imagery rarely appeared in Redon's early work. However, during the 1890s Redon responded to the Catholic revival that emerged in France during the previous decade and remained a powerful force in the nation's cultural life until the First World War. Conservative Catholics sought to counter the increasing secularization and anticlericalism in French society following the end of the Franco-Prussian War in 1872, and opposed the tendency of intellectuals to place blind trust in science and Positivism. During the late 1870s Redon frequented the salon of Berthe de Rayssac, where religious anti-republicanism was in a germinative stage, and although his own liberal ideas often clashed with the reactionary views of his host and her circle of writers and artists, he was interested in their anti-Realist stance, which became the foundation for literary Symbolism.

Redon had many close friends who figured in the Catholic revival, which in the arts diverged into two contrasting camps. On one side there was the gentle and benign conception of faith to which the poet and playwright Paul Claudel and the painters Emile Bernard and Maurice Denis were drawn. At the more extremist and ascetic end of the spectrum were the writers Leon Bloy and J.K. Huysmans. All were admirers of Redon's work; the artist felt (referring to Bernard) that 'it is always these sorts of people who make me feel that my work has been best understood' (quoted in D.W. Druick & P.K. Zegers, exh. cat., Odilon Redon: Prince of Dreams, The Art Institute of Chicago, 1994, p. 209).

Although one might expect that the introduction of Christian imagery into Redon's work during the 1890's would signal a more austere and anti-sensualist stance in his outlook, the opposite is true, for in this decade his noirs assume a less central position in his work, and he began to use colour in his pictures, by employing the more painterly media of pastel and oil. Redon was perhaps now inclined to use religious imagery because it allowed him to broaden the appeal of his works, an aim that he hoped his use of new media and colour would also accomplish. In contrast to the imagery of his earlier noirs, which was often esoteric and occasionally hinted at Satanic themes, Christian subjects would be met with greater understanding and sympathy among a wider audience. Redon exhibited religious subjects in each of his major exhibitions during the 1890s and into the next century.

Redon's interpretations of the life and sacrifice of Christ contain elements of his liberal social outlook and generally underplay the traditional devotional aspect of such imagery. The present work is especially beautiful for its spiritual treatment of abstract elements in the composition. Interlocking vertical and horizontal forms frame the scene, and Christ is viewed half-length, emphasizing the interior drama of his suffering. The rainbow-like arc of light behind the cross represents the hope of salvation. The colours radiate forward from the rear of the composition in the way that light passes through stained glass. The overall effect is serenely contemplative; the picture seeks not inspire religious fervour, but to provide a balm for the troubled mind. 'Redon identified Christ's redemption of the fall with human evolution, representing the historical process of the race as at once a physical and spiritual process. He saw evolved intelligence as divine salvation' (op. cit., p. 173).